When I was speaking before the Adjournment I had been dealing with the methods by which up to this our public capital programme had been financed. I had been dealing with the three ways that had been utilised in addition to the normal method of savings. I had explained that one of them, the Marshall Aid Counterpart Loan, was completely exhausted and the two others were now much attenuated and were required in other directions. They are the external reserves of the commercial banks and the external reserves of departmental funds.
It is because the normal method, savings, is there, as the basis upon which there must be any capital development in the future, if we are not to have further inflation resulting in balance of payments deficits, that the Government has been for some very considerable time stressing the necessity of savings. In relation to that, we must remember that the capital programme of public authorities is only one part of the draw on the available capital of the community, that if the whole pool of savings is not sufficient to meet the requirements of public authorities and of the private sector of the economy, the effect of too high a proportion being taken in one sector may mean, and will mean, less for the other sector. If the pool of savings is restricted and the public programme takes up too much of that pool, the effect will be that there will be less capital available for the development that is required, and urgently required, in the private sector.
We must, therefore, take any and every step that lies open to us to increase the volume of savings in the community. We must realise that, having regard to the absence of the three props which were there in the past and to which I referred, if we want productive capital development in future, as I think every Party in this House does want, realising that on it will depend the chance of a progressive increase in the economy of the country, it must be sustained, and adequately sustained, by a proper volume of savings. That will not be the case merely for this Government. It will be the case for the Government—it will be a long time off—that succeeds this one and it will be the case for the Government that succeeds that one again.
We must realise that, if we are to be able to get the development of the kind that we want, we must be prepared to do without some of the things that we might like for our most immediate needs. It was on that account that the selection of certain less essential articles was made in the lists of the import levies that were introduced. Real works of development are better than things like furs or television sets. That is the principle upon which the import levies were based.
So much for the general economic picture that was thrown up during the course of this debate. There were certain other incidental things that were mentioned by Deputies, as apart from the actual Bill, to which I might refer very briefly. Deputy Lemass said that I had called the situation a desperate situation. That was not the word I used or would use. It is a serious situation but one which can be surmounted by proper steps taken to surmount it and it is improper of Deputy Lemass to endeavour to put into my mouth words that I never uttered.
Deputy MacEntee, when he was speaking, referred to the interest rates on national loans. I think the appropriate thing in considering, as he was considering, the interest rates on different loans, is not just to take the rate of interest on any particular loan but to take the rate of interest on that loan in relation to the general international rate of interest prevailing at the time and, if the Deputy cares to take the matter on that basis and to compare the rates that I offered vis-a-vis, for example, the rates then available for similar gilt-edged securities in the British market, he will find that my margin is much nearer than was his margin.
Reference was made also to the results of the National Loan the other day. It is, of course, a matter for regret that only £9,000,000, instead of £12,000,000 was subscribed if the effect of that means that the £3,000,000 has got to be found in other ways and that the £3,000,000 that will now be put in to fill the vacuum there would be available otherwise if the full subscription had been made but, while that is so, it is also a matter for congratulation in relation to the loan that the number of small subscribers was far greater than had recently been the case and that the loan was subscribed to the extent of 75 per cent. at a time when the international situation had developed in the Middle East in a way that nobody visualised. The comparative course, for example, of our loan here and the Australian loan that was floated in London on more or less the same terms showed that our results, in that international situation, were far better than those obtained by Australia, who got approximately only £2,500,000 out of the £7,000,000 for which they were looking.
Criticisms were made by Deputy Lemass in relation to the provisions in this measure, that one of the things that should have been included, in particular, was relief in respect of the acquisition of costs of mines. I find it very, very hard indeed to accept from Deputy Lemass that brazen assertion when I remember that it was his Government, in 1946, that brought in a provision for writing off certain development costs in relation to mines and quite specifically excluded from the 1946 Act the cost of acquisition to which he refers to-day. In fact, it would be fair for me to say that there was hardly one sentence that was uttered by Deputy Lemass yesterday, when he was speaking on the provisions of the Bill, that was not open to the charge that they, on their side of the House, had 19 years to endeavour to utilise this form of mining tax legislation and the form that I operated in relation to metallic or non-bedded ores early this year and that, during those 19 years, they never brought in any such tax incentive.
